confess my sins, to escape hell, and gain heaven! So that tllere was nothing in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that could have come between me and eternal happiness; and I might have been happy! Truly I might have been so, and much easier than many of the elect, who received far fewer graces and benefits from God than I did. I might have saved my soul much easier than many of you penitent sinners, who are now saints in heaven, and whose sins were more numerous and grievous than mine! Ah, if I had only done penance like you!
But they did not wish it. Why then did I not do so? Why am I not in eternal joys like those others? Why am I now in hell? I alone am to blame! The will was wanting to me! This is the cruel memory that now tortures me and that will never cease to torment me for all eternity. The will was wanting; I did not wish to hearken to the voice of God; I closed my eyes to the light; I rejected good inspirations; I disregarded the warnings of my conscience; I refused to profit by the countless means of salvation that were offered me; I made no use of the opportunities I had of doing good. Priests and preachers of God! I avoided your salutary doctrine and exhortations; I refused to go to sermons because I did not wish to be aroused from the sleep of sin, and if I heard them sometimes it was on matters that made no impression on my conscience, or otherwise if they did touch on my vices, I either absented myself because I did not wish to be troubled or made better, or else I treated them as mere fables and priestly fictions. Ah, now I am only too well persuaded of the truth of what God said by your lips about the vanity of the world and other matters that I refused to believe in then. Now, when it is too late, I see that the pains of hell, that you so often described to me in order to inspire me with a salutary fear, are infinitely greater and more intolerable than you pictured them to me. I had not the will when it was so easy for me! I wilfully followed the inspirations of the devil, the allurements of wicked men, the perverse usages and customs of the world. I have wasted my precious time in sin; I have deferred repentance from day to day, nntil no more time was left to me. Wretch that I am! Would that I had done right when I had the chance! Where was my reason? Who blinded and bewitched me to such an extent? Is it possible, is it really the case that I have refused the eternal joys of heaven, although they were offered me? Is it really true that when I might have escaped hell I was unwilling to do so?
